According to a 2010 audit by the city, the amount that the city pays every year for the retirement plans of its retired workers has risen from $73 million in 2001 to $245 million in 2011. Over the last two decades, the amount paid by the city in total pension benefit payments has grown sevenfold. The amount that is paid out of the account every year has been exceeding the amount paid in for over 10 years. The city's 2010 audit also says that the city is about $2 billion short of the amount that should be in the account to pay for future benefits.[1],[2]

Support

Chuck Reed, San Jose's mayor, is a leading supporter of the pension reform measure. He began advocating for pension reform in the city in early 2011. Scott Herhold, a Mercury News columnist, says, "Make no mistake: The proposal that San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed unveiled...to curtail retirement and health benefits for city employees will define his mayoral career."[3]

Jeff Cristina, director of Environmental Services at GreenWaste Recovery in San Jose, supports the measure.[1]

County Assessor Larry Stone says he supports the measure because "We need significant reform, not just incremental reform. Why? Because the current system is unsustainable."[1]

Opposition

The measure is opposed by the city's public sector employee unions. In a statement released by five unions after the vote to place the measure on the June ballot, the unions said, "the mayor and his supporters scored some political points today, but only time will tell what the ultimate cost to our city will be."[1]

Robin Johansen of Remcho, Johansen & Purcell is the attorney working with the plaintiffs. In the complaint, she says, "The code says it has to be fair and impartial, not an argument for the measure. When you look at the kinds of emotionally laden words -- reform and abuse, essential services -- those are very strongly worded phrases intended to get people to vote for the measure."[7]

Chuck Reed said, of the lawsuit, "They're doing everything they can to try to keep the voters from considering the ballot measure. So this is just another step."[7]

On Thursday, April 5, a three-judge panel of the Sixth District Court of Appeal issued an order to prevent the printing of any ballots while litigation is pending. Johansen, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said, "We are pleased that the 6th District Court of Appeal will consider our emergency writ seeking to ensure that the ballot question for Measure B is impartial and complies with California election law."[9]

Ultimately, the court ordered some changes in the way the measure appears on the ballot, but allowed the election on the measure to go forward.[10]

Voter guide arguments

On March 23, Beth Roth (the campaign treasurer for Measure B) and Pete Constant (a San Jose city council member) filed a lawsuit seeking to have six statements removed from the "arguments against" section of the official voter guide.[11]

Their complaint says that Measure B opponents smuggled "false and misleading" statements into their argument against Measure B.[12]

The six statements/phrases that Measure B supporters sought to have removed on the grounds that these statements are false were:

"It could eliminate disability retirements for police and firefighters injured on the job and unable to perform their previous duties, it increases by thousands of dollars the amount widows and seniors pay for promised health care, and the City admitted that Measure B may not be constitutional because it violates employees’ vested rights."

"But city officials never even tried to offer taxpayers a way to achieve any savings that would stand up in court."

"City workers recently took 10%-18% pay cuts."

"Employees proposed dozens of legal pension reforms that would have increased retirement ages, reduced benefit levels and lowered COLA’s. Police and fire even proposed to cut pensions back to 1962 levels."